One of the most egregious scams of the decade was the well-meaning state legislation that allowed for individuals to be paid a salary to care for members of their extended family.
Gee, what could go wrong there?
The idea, of course, was to try to keep the infirm at home rather than sending them to institutions such as nursing homes. That was the same rationale behind the massive home healthcare industry that ballooned in the last few decades. Better to pay an aide to come into one’s home four or eight hours a day (or sometimes longer) than place a person in an institution costing $18,000 a month.
However, it could’ve been easily anticipated that declaring family members to be home health aides was going to open the door to tremendous fraud.
Since time immemorial, sons and daughters would care for elderly mothers, as would sisters, brothers, nieces and grandchildren. To now say all of them can be eligible for a salary of up to $43,000 for doing so would incentivize elderly patients to dramatically exaggerate their infirm status simply so the family members could collect a salary. And, sure enough, the program has exploded, costing taxpayers over $6 billion.
It’s one of the reasons that New York Medicare costs are the highest in the nation. New York spends more on Medicaid than Florida and Texas combined.
The cost of the Medicaid program in New York has exploded in the last five years. This is simply unsustainable. Let’s see if our legislative leaders and the governor have the guts to rein it in.